I am new to
RGAFridays and was intrigued by
this week's session with
Clare Buchta as it featured gum arabic as a masking fluid with india ink. I've never knowingly played with gum arabic and thought this would be a brilliant opportunity to try it out and learn with others.
We painted with gum arabic (Clare suggested tinting with some watercolour so you can see what you are doing) on to paper that is ok to wash - using fruits etc. as our inspiration. I took an orange half.
We were to paint the bits we wanted to stay white - everything else would stay black. We could use our watercolour brushes, or any mark making implement like bamboo sticks that Clare had given to us.
Once the gum arabic had dried (with the help of a hair dryer), we painted over it using india ink
note: do not use your precious watercolour brushes with india ink - it ruins them.
There were two types of ink at the class -Winsor and Newton which seemed to give a black/almost sepia effect and also, Talens India Ink (brought in by
Therese) that seemed to be really, properly black.
We waited for that to dry and then teased the gum arabic off under the tap gently with a brush that was only for the indian ink.
My experiments are below - I used textured watercolour paper, acrylic paper (that has an almost canvas like look, and smooth watercolour paper) - once the gum arabic was washed off, I used watercolours (Joan of Art), soluble wax crayons (Caran d'ache neo II) and some markers.
 |
| On textured water colour and lots of gum arabic marks. Realised that I had forgotten to mask out the orange skin. |
 |
| On acrylic paper done at the same time and so forgot the orange skin. |
 |
| On smooth water colour - Messed up the marks in the segments but remembered to mask the orange skin |
Again, seeing how people had used what they learned was fascinating. Here's one fab
example of a pomegranate by Rosemary Harper
I looked up gum arabic section of
Ian Sidaway's fantastic classes again in the
watercolour course. Here's a link to the
behind the scenes bit with him. Then found a few youtube videos about how you can use gum arabic to grlaze, bind, add the watery effect and promptly bought a bottle and put the India ink into the basket for later.
Yet again, the class was inspiring and am looking forward to March 15th's session with
Emily Gillmor. As they say on the site: "
The cost per session is £6 for members and £7 for guests. An additional small charge is made if any specialised materials are needed or a model is involved. No need to book, just turn up. Everyone Welcome!"
